50 years not enough to assess Nigeria – ACF

By Emeka Mamah
Kaduna — The Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, says 50 years in the life of a nation is too short for any meaningful assessment of its socio-economic and political development but that it is worth celebrating for the express purpose of assessing progress against plans in order to effect correction and move forward.

The ACF in a press statement yesterday signed by the group’s National Publicity Secretary, Anthony Sani, said: “within the period under review, Nigeria has been able to overcome its fault lines occasioned by the civil war and the annulment of the results of June 12, 1993 presidential elections.

“The country has no excuse for the abysmal decay in social infrastructure such as railways, the airlines, fertilizer companies refineries as well as public schools and health institutions that worked in the past.

This has been brought about by successive feckless leadership that have tended to sire corruption which in turn steals the people’s empowerment, steals the people’s opportunities and steals their future.

“That may account for why Nigeria rather than being a jaunty face of democratic values and socio_economic development is today a butt of joke across the globe as the Third World of the Third World. It is the position of the ACF that only free and fair elections can bring about national grandeur, can inspire purposeful leadership with abiding faith in the judgment of the people.”

Also commenting on the nation’s 50th anniversary, the Holy Order of the Cherubim and Seraphim Movement Church (CSMC) said corrupt and irresponsible leadership have been responsible for the woes that have bedeviled the Nigerian nation in the past 50 years after political independence from colonial rule.

The CSMC Supreme Head and Chairman, Most Reverend Samuel Abidoye, in his goodwill Nigerians entitled, “Nigeria’s Golden Jubilee: Whither Hope?” accused the nation’s political elite and the ruling class of alienating themselves from the people on whose mandate they claimed to be exercising power and authority.